Secrets of State by Matthew Palmer Page A

Pakistan. Agilent was, in reality, a front company registered in the Bahamas and controlled by the Council. So, for that matter, was Argus Systems. The Council made use of the tools it had and made the tools it needed.
    â€œThere is precious little time,” the Chairman agreed. “But we are moving as quickly as is possible under the circumstances. We all approved of the plan and the schedule that Operations outlined for us. Now is not the time to second-guess. It is the time to look for loose ends, anything we may have missed that could jeopardize the success of the operation. Does anyone at the table have a useful contribution to make in this regard?”
    â€œI believe that I might,” the Vice Chair remarked.
    The Vice Chair had been Spears’s predecessor as Ops, moving up in the group’s hierarchy to the number two spot on the Council when the previous Vice had left government service and returned to his walnut farm in California. She was young, both for this job and the senior management position she occupied at the State Department. She was also telegenic, something that had not hurt her rapid rise to the top.
    â€œWhat do you have?”
    â€œWe have a new problem with the White House.”
    â€œWhat is our dear friend Emily up to now?”
    â€œIt’s not Lord personally. It’s her chief of staff, Solomon Braithwaite. Our op has too many moving parts to fly completely below radar. The White House has picked up enough data to suspect that something is going on in South Asia that does not have official sanction. I have a source in the NSC who told me that Braithwaite has put together his own team of experienced operatives who report directly to him and, through him, to President Lord. I don’t have any information on numbers or the nature of their assignment, just that they are out looking for us. I know Braithwaite. He’s a pit bull. Once he gets his teeth into a problem, he’s not going to let go easily.”
    â€œWhat about co-opting Braithwaite?” the Chairman asked. “What are his weaknesses?”
    â€œHe’s a bit of a prig,” Reports offered. “But he’s squeaky clean. Nothing exploitable.”
    â€œDo you think he could be persuaded? Made to see reason? Would he understand the underlying logic of what we’re doing?”
    â€œI’d be surprised,” Legal said, shaking his head with an air of sorrowful resignation. The group’s lawyer, a graying D.C. native from the Justice Department, was the longest-serving member of the Council. Twice over the last ten years he had turned down offers to assume the Chairman’s role, a lack of ambition that Spears found hard to understand. “Braithwaite and Lord go back a long way. They were allies in New Jersey when she was governor and he was majority leader in the state senate. I don’t see him doing anything he would interpret as betraying her.”
    â€œLegal’s correct,” Finance chimed in. Although a banker by both training and disposition, Finance had a keen political mind as well as close connections to the Lord administration. In his civilian life, Finance had been a partner at Goldman Sachs and a leading fund-raiser for Emily Lord before joining her administration as an undersecretary at the Treasury Department. He had quickly grown disenchanted, however, with what he saw as the softhearted naivete of the Lord White House. The current Vice Chair had recognized his discontent and recruited him to the Stoics. It had been a real coup on her part and even the Chairman respected Finance’s views on Lord and her inner circle.
    â€œBraithwaite is even more obtuse than Lord when it comes to the Islamist threat,” Finance continued. “They’re essentially apologists for the extremists. As though it were somehow the fault of the United States that lunatics in thrall to a violent ideology would seek to do us harm. Braithwaite would not